in-world versus external sculp and mesh makers?

[Optimum Actor]

I'll confess that I haven't been building very long, and that's why I'm interested in people's experience and opinions about using in-world vs external sculpt and mesh makers. After a search I found these in-world tools via the Marketplace:

• Celzius - Sculpt Creation Tool L$999 (Cel Edman)
  "You can choose between 30 geometric shapes, and build something with them. Your build & creation can be converted to sculpt-image. About 13 to 16 sub-sculpties can be used to make a 1 prim sculpt image." 
• Prim Generator L$2,611 (ShopNN)
  "32 prims become 1 sculpted prim. The sculpted map can be easily made in the in-world."
• Sculpt Studio L$4,999 (The Black Box)
  "A high-end in-world sculpting tool for beginners, advanced and professional Sculptors, that allows to apply SL building skills to sculpting." This seems to use a "lathe" system whereby you have a column of radiating points which you can edit, each mapped to part of the finished sculptie (more detail here).
• Celzium L$1,995 (Cel Edman)
  "You can select from 32 mesh objects and create more complex build with these, Up to 8 different textures/materials are supported, includes UV-texturing and layout. Up to 200 sub-meshes can be rezzed and converted to a collada .dae file. You can upload into SL, or like blender and other 3D software packages."
• Mesh Studio L$4,999 (The Black Box)
  From the videos I've seen and what I've read you build regular prims in a linkset, insert a script into the root of that linkset and then run it. It sends you to a page  where a server generates a .dae file (collada model) for you. You can then edit that in an external program and/or load it back into SL as a model.

Celzius, Prim Generator, and Celzium all have systems where end up at external pages where a sculpt image is generated for you and you can upload. They also all use a system where you select the components of what you're making from a selection of predefined shapes. Celzius has a DNA expansion for plants, and Prim Generator has several expansion packs, each offering extra shapes with variations. From what I know these are not straight prims, so you can't cut, hollow or twist them, but you can stretch and rotate them.

Sculpt Studio has a more detailed way of making a sculptie, and it reminds me of 3D printers which print one layer at a time. I'm not sure exactly what advantage there is in using this method. I was very impressed with the videos I saw of Mesh Studio, and then I discovered that Singularity and Radgast viewers can download a .dae file from your linkset directly. The results seem mixed. It seems that whether you do it in-world or in a 3D program, the models made are improved by making faces which don't sow transparent, because that cuts down on the number of triangles used. But in any case, why use Mesh Studio if you can do it in these viewers (not a rhetorical question - there may be some advantage I'm unaware of)?

When it came to external tools I looked at the free ones only, because I have a limited budget and high end 3D editors can be expensive). I found:

• Blender
  Fully fledge 3D editing tool. The interface seemed to have improved in the latest version. There are tutorials and plugins to help make/edit sculpties and mesh for SL.
• Wings 3D
  Described as a Polygon Modeller. I know you can make sculpties in this, not so sure about mesh (but that's probably the case).
• SculptyPaint, PlopSL, Rokuro, and Tokoroten
  All of these are specialized applications for making either symmetrical or specific types sculpties. All of these either have commercial versions, or links to commercial programs to make sculpties and mesh.

At the moment I build sets/scenes for a group that makes webcomics in SL (machinomics). This means that on the whole they aren't meant to be permanent. Rather they get stored until they are needed, then rezzed for the duration of a shot, and packed away again afterwards. At the moment I'm not looking sell anything. Nothing stops one from using both in-world and external tools. While I'd be nice to have all the tools listed above, a limited budget means that I don't want to buy something I may not use, or have a free alternative to.

So, some input please. The questions  I have are:

• When would or do you use the in-world tools, and why?
• When would using an external tool be better?

[Rolig Loon]

IMO, sculpties are a dead end.  They were a stopgap, introduced to SL while Linden Lab was moving toward letting creators import true 3D mesh objects.  As such, they were a great advance for their time.  They have severe geometric limitations, however, and generally have a much higher land impact than mesh.  They are therefore not practical for most creative work in SL, and it is difficult to justify selling them to end users who have to live within SL's land impact constraints. Given that reality, I would not recommend looking at any of the in-world or external tools for making sculpties.  Personally, I have either withdrawn many of the sculpty items I once had for sale completely or have been slowly replacing them with higher-quailty mesh items.

[Tiffy Vella]

Yes, what Rolig said. I'd suggest that you skip sculpts, and invest your energies in mesh. Blender is the only mesh program I've tried, so I'm the wrong person to ask for comparisons, but I love it to bits. There are a ton of tutorials on you tube, as well as a good inworld help group and the blender website is also a fantastic source of info.

 

 

[Optimum Actor]

I would not recommend looking at any of the in-world or external tools for making sculpties.  Personally, I have either withdrawn many of the sculptie items I once had for sale completely or have been slowly replacing them with higher-quality mesh items.

I did come across one use for sculpties - an animated toilet seat that raised an lowered when you sat on it, and using a technique of swapping sculptie textures (and thereby changing its shape). I had thought that maybe sculpties had an advantage in the making of simple but irregular objects or components, but perhaps not. The videos I've seen are impressive, but there are problems in applying regular textures to a sculptie, and it seemed too that there was a limit to just how accurate, and how much detail one can get with a sculptie.

So, assuming I discard Sculpties as an option for the moment, what of the in-world mesh makers, Celzium and Mesh Studio? I liked the fact that with Celzium you seemed to be able to select texture areas (up to 8) in-world.

[Rolig Loon]

Well, if I were making a toilet seat like that, I'd make it as a fairly simple mesh object and treat it the same way I'd handle a door or a box lid.  Swapping sculpty UV maps is really a clumsy way to do that one.

Tiffy's right.  Go with Blender.  It's free, there are loads of tutorials, it's very versatile, and it's by far the most popular 3D program among creators in SL.  You'll have a large community of fellow designers to share thoughts and sighs with.

[Optimum Actor]

OK then, what about using Singularity and Radgast to save .dae files (and then cleaning this up with Blender)?  I can see the advantage of this is that you can build a linkset directly in-world and know that it will fit exactly how you want it with other components of a scene. That means I don't have to relearn entirely any building skills I have. Am I missing any traps with this? It seems you can also

(also Free, but external) with the help of some plugins and some cleaning up in Blender, which means that it's another program to build in, another option.

Of course both produce .dae files which need to be cleaned up with Blender, so gaining expertise with Blender would seem to be a requirement of either.

[Rolig Loon]

We're out of my depth when we get to in-world tools like those.  From what little I know, they are less versatile than the external programs are, and they do add another step or two.  After all, if you are going to have to clean up the files with Blender anyway, why not just start there?  What I know about Sketchup doesn't impress me much.  Most comments I have read say that Sketchup makes much less efficient mesh objects -- less well optimized.  It's basically a quick and dirty program for making architectural things with big, flat sides.  You really need to hear other voices about it and your other options, though.  I use Blender exclusively.

[Optimum Actor]

That's fair enough. Obviously you get results doing it your way. Yes, I'd like a bit more feedback as well before I commit.

[BlackMagi Darkwatch]

Hi Optimum

It is possible to use SketchUp to create mesh but as mentioned it can  create un-optimised geometry – the only way around this (I’ve found) is to use layers in SketchUp and place contiguous parts on separate layers so that SketchUp doesn’t create the geometry. Take the resultant file into Blender and join it.  Advantage is dead simple to create and texture.

Celzium, create your mesh object and take it into Blender to texture, this may of changed with a later versions(?) but for me when I bought it you had to UV unwrap the model to apply your textures,  no good for me as the UV mapping was where I was having 99% of my issues! 

I now use a combination of Mesh studio and Blender.  I make my build in world so I can ‘feel’ the space and apply the basic textures.  Take the build into Blender and make the LOD/Physics model, make any UV maps I need, clean (if necessary).  You can of course do the LOD/Physics model in world but I find it quicker (now) to do in Blender.

Whatever route you decide to take, make sure you keep a bucket load of patience by your side as you may find yourself dipping into said bucket often!

 

HTH

Black

[Optimum Actor]

I now use a combination of Mesh studio and Blender.  I make my build in world so I can ‘feel’ the space and apply the basic textures.  Take the build into Blender and make the LOD/Physics model, make any UV maps I need, clean (if necessary).  You can of course do the LOD/Physics model in world but I find it quicker (now) to do in Blender.

What do you think the advantage to using Mesh Studio would be over downloading .dae files with Singularity? It's just unclear to me what Mesh Studio Does that the Singularity Export doesn't.

See my main use for these tools would be making components of sets, for example the following was the base outline of a floor of a sky hanger:

The central white prim is a general use are whereas the blue and green prims have more detailed areas with interior walls. The four holes in the corners are for stairwells and lift shafts. Now it would be nice to have this as one mesh with 6 textures (top / bottom and four sides). This might not seem much of a savings in prims but with a 4 story structure including exterior and interior walls it adds up. But as a set is only rezzed sometimes for a shoot, is it even worth making a mesh (or even a sculptie) of this?

Not sure if this makes a difference in which tools to use, but thought I'd explain what I'd be using the tools for in this case. This is also why making something whole in Blender is less appealing than constructing something in SL first, and then making it a mesh or sculptie - because I can see how it all fits first.

[BlackMagi Darkwatch]

Hi, just had a very quick look at the Singularity export.  I am going to start by saying - I'm not an expert, the opinions I write here are my own - I have learnt everything I know by watching videos, breaking things and reading forums!

Looking at what you want to create, wouldn't you be better off staying with prims and just change the prim type to convex hull?  As long as you don't add any hollow or cut prims (unless you change the physics type to none) I can't honestly see much of a saving.

Anyway, with that said - MS lets me choose how detailed I want my model.  I can increase or decrease how detailed the geometry will be. Now with the test export from singularity, I exported the standard prim - it gave me (as reported in Blender) 54 vertices (48 tris), removing doubles gave me a vertice count of 26.  Whereas the standard box prim in Blender is 8 vertices (12 tris) so for a simple build there would certainly be some work to do to optimise.  I work on the premise that the fewer tris the less lag there will be.

Hth

Black

 

Edited: Spelling

[Optimum Actor]

...wouldn't you be better off staying with prims and just change the prim type to convex hull?  As long as you don't add any hollow or cut prims (unless you change the physics type to none) I can't honestly see much of a saving.

That is probably the case when making a set. I did explain what I was building and how it was used earlier, but without an example people may have missed that. Making a single object for a roof or floor has advantages other than saving prims. A single object roof/floor/wall can have a door script in it to move it out of shot, or to be made transparent temporarily. That can be done manually but it becomes messier with more than one object involved.

Anyway, with that said - MS lets me choose how detailed I want my model.

So it saves the amount of work one needs to do later. That's worth knowing.

 

[BlackMagi Darkwatch]

I'm pleased this thread may of been able to help or answer your questions.

The only other thing I would say is in relation to "So it saves the amount of work one needs to do later.  That's worth knowing."  I don't want to stop you from learning about Blender - it really does ROCK but don't put yourself under any undue pressure to learn it.  Try with the various TPV export features and remove the extra edge loops to see if the textures remain usable (I didn't try) before potentially parting with your L$'s. 

The most important thing to take away from this is fun & learning (along with the aforementioned bucket load of patience!!!)

Black

[LepreKhaun]

One thing to keep in mind is that in-world mesh creation tools are no substitute for a solid grasp of a 3D modeling program. They are good for tossing together a quick prototype to give you something more than a "blank canvas" to start with. But for organic shapes and (the necessary!) complete control over both the topology and UV-mapping of your models, a stand alone 3D modeling program is required.

 

My recommendation is to learn Blender: The price is right, it is very SL friendly and has more features than most realize. On that last point, I've just learned how to edit video with Blender http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+edit+video&oq=blender+edit+video and found it does just as good of a job as the "Big Boy" dedicated video editors once you've set up the windows properly, with definable/controled scene transitions, green screen, rotoscoping, titling, special effects options etc. wot wot?!?

 

Of course the problem with learning Blender is its user interface- It has improved recently but still has a ways to go. But I found the best way to learn was by doing, keyboard shortcut keys and menu placements is mainly a matter of training your fingers, same as touch typing.

 

With that in mind, an 80 hour 2-3 week investment in doing Lessons 1-5, 8 and 12 at http://www.gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html will get anyone serious about modeling started on the right road.

 

[ETA: Do not try to learn sculpties and mesh at the same time! They have more differences than they share common ground and it will only confuse you. Anyway, sculpties were only a stop gap measure LL tossed out while they figured out the mesh scheme. Skip them entirely at this point is my opinion.]

[Optimum Actor]

One thing to keep in mind is that in-world mesh creation tools are no substitute for a solid grasp of a 3D modeling program. They are good for tossing together a quick prototype to give you something more than a "blank canvas" to start with. But for organic shapes and (the necessary!) complete control over both the topology and UV-mapping of your models, a stand alone 3D modeling program is required.

I'm not so sure about this. The following is the "Beta Base" set I built recently for SECONDS:

It was put together using straight prims, and selected mesh, sculpties and textures from the market place. Not meant to be a permanent structure, but something to be rezzed when needed for a scene (so mostly it exists as 17 linksets in a Builder's Buddy). But I'm not so sure that building it straight from an external program would be a good idea. I was getting feedback from the rest of the group about what features should be where and how it should look, but if I did that using Blender or another program that wouldn't happen, or not in the same way.

That's why I've had more interest in in-world tools, because I can get that feedback before I upload and pay for anything. That doesn't mean though that I can't rebuild or redesign something in Blender based on that feedback. And being able to design one's own mesh via an external program would probably reduce the need to buy pre-made ones on the market place (like the antennae in the image above). It seems that most options lead to Blender!

I've just learned how to edit video with Blender and found it does just as good of a job as the "Big Boy" dedicated video editors once you've set up the windows properly, with definable/controlled scene transitions, green screen, rotoscoping, titling, special effects options etc.

I'll look into that. I already have several video editors, including Premiere Pro, so I'm not short of options.

With that in mind, an 80 hour 2-3 week investment in doing Lessons 1-5, 8 and 12 will get anyone serious about modeling started on the right road.

I'll make a note of that. Right now in Real Life I'm finishing a post-graduate degree, and that's got to get priority. Most of what I've been doing in SL has been at nights. Once the degree's done I shall investigate all this thoroughly.

[steph Arnott]

99% of my builds are prims, I only use mesh when the geometry is beyond prim capability. I feel mesh is over used in SL, I have seen a flat floor in mesh, why is beyond me. If I do mesh I use sketchup and tidy up all the unnecessary vertices in Blender.

[Scooter Hollow]

The main advantage of Sketchup over Blender is that Sketchup is far easier to learn to use. In the long term you can spend time watching hours of tutorials on youtube, but if you want something simple, today, like 3d text or an architectural pillar or something, sketchup is pretty handy.

 

One reason to use mesh versions of simple shapes is you can assign the UV mapping. If you have a UV texture of a box, uploading one and slapping the texture on it may be easier than trying to manually align all of the sides correctly.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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steph Arnott wrote:

99% of my builds are prims, I only use mesh when the geometry is beyond prim capability. I feel mesh is over used in SL, I have seen a flat floor in mesh, why is beyond me. If I do mesh I use sketchup and tidy up all the unnecessary vertices in Blender.

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If you can use mesh, for heaven's sake, use mesh. A prim box uses 108 triangles (when you are close), a mesh box only 12, of those 12 triangles you can probably delete 8 and just keep top and bottom for floor and ceiling. For one box, the difference is negligible, but for a big build or even a whole sim, the difference will be noticable in performance.

[Perrie Juran]

 

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

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steph Arnott wrote:

99% of my builds are prims, I only use mesh when the geometry is beyond prim capability. I feel mesh is over used in SL, I have seen a flat floor in mesh, why is beyond me. If I do mesh I use sketchup and tidy up all the unnecessary vertices in Blender.

---

If you can use mesh, for heaven's sake, use mesh. A prim box uses 108 triangles (when you are close), a mesh box only 12, of those 12 triangles you can probably delete 8 and just keep top and bottom for floor and ceiling. For one box, the difference is negligible, but for a big build or even a whole sim, the difference will be noticable in performance.

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Don't you begin to get into a quantity versus quality issue here?

I don't know how to analyze this stuff to really decipher it all and some of it is so hard to explain or verbalize what I am seeing.  Many of the things made out of Mesh I am seeing, while they have a low impact, they just look "mushy" on my screen.  They lack crispness. 

I'm seriously getting to the point that I feel Mesh is having more negative impact on performance client side than all the poorly textured prims and sculpts out there.  I know that is anecdotal, I have nothing technical to back that statement up.  I just know my performance continues to degrade and the least common denominator is more and more mesh.

It is really a shame that Alpha and Omega Points has closed now.  Especially because none of the machinimas capture the incredible detail of the texturing there.  Those SIMs were stunning.  All of it built before there was Mesh.  I haven't seen a single thing made out of Mesh that equals what they did there.  And it was lag free. 

I have other examples I could post.  Look up "The World Of Nemo."  Again, pre-mesh.

I'm not a happy camper right now about what is going on.

 

[Optimum Actor]

The problems I can see with Mesh vs Prim are deformations in the viewer. For example, here's two prefab rooftop aircon units I bought for props, close up and at a distance:

As you can see the one on the left (3 prims, non mesh + textures) is fine, whereas the one on the right (1 prim, mesh) deforms. If I read one of the previous comments correctly, this is probably because straight prims have more triangles in them. The one on the right probably has less triangles in it! This is probably not critical for general use, because most AVs will be closer to the object. But for webcomic snapshots you need something that looks good at different distances.  That's why I opted to use the prim version (mostly) for this set (a modded version of a Marketplace item no longer available):

[Perrie Juran]

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Optimum Actor wrote:

The problems I can see with Mesh vs Prim are deformations in the viewer. For example, here's two prefab rooftop aircon units I bought for props, close up and at a distance:

As you can see the one on the left (3 prims, non mesh + textures) is fine, whereas the one on the right (1 prim, mesh) deforms. If I read one of the previous comments correctly, this is probably because straight prims have more triangles in them. The one on the right probably has less triangles in it! This is probably not critical for general use, because most AVs will be closer to the object. But for webcomic snapshots you need something that looks good at different distances.  That's why I opted to use the prim version (mostly) for this set (a modded version of a Marketplace item no longer available):

 

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Your snapshot above is a good example in an extreme sense of what I mean.  I was looking at some prefab mesh homes with a friend the other day so I was up close and personal.  As we walked through all of them they had a mushy like you were about to sink into a sculpty feeling.  Snapshots won't really convey what I am talking about but after a while I began to feel like this:

 

Of course in different case scenarios an Individuals needs may vary such as in yours.  But I'm thinking mainly in terms of just being out and about in SL.

In your model above we have a degraded viewing experience.  The item looks like crap at a distance.

But what I am really beginning to question is this:  People have an expectation (whether falsely or not) of lower Land Impact with Mesh.  But that is impact on the server.  But is that translating where it counts most in the end, impact on the Viewer.

If Mesh is having a negative impact on performance (Client side lag, lower FPS,etc) as well as degraded visual imagery like in your picture above, then Mesh is not a good thing, or at least no where close to the improvements being touted on us.

I lack the ability technically to measure it.  I just know my overall experience in my day by day Second Life and right now I am not a happy camper about it.

 

[arton Rotaru]

Well, what you see there are poorly made LOD models. Degrading a box shape like this, to a single triangle is just lazyness, or cheating the land impact system. With mesh the creator has the abillity to create all Level Of Detail models like he/she wish.

Example of a mesh model with hand made Level of Detail models:

 

This Jerry Can has a download weight of 0.4. So there isn't really any reason to not provide decent LOD models.

[arton Rotaru]

Well, mesh isn't bad at all when it comes to rendering. Of course it all depends on how it is made. If you look at highpoly meshes with a bunch of 1024x1024 textures applied, your viewer will struggle rendering the same as if you would look at prims/sculpts with the same number of polygons/textures applied.

It's all up to the mesh creator how render friendly his/her content will be. While with prims, we are kinda stuck to fixed numbers, mesh can be much less of a pain rendering wise, when done properly.

But yeah, since this is Second Life, and not a creation platform for pro game creators only, there will be plenty of so called bad mesh around as well. It's the nature of the beast.

 

 

[Perrie Juran]

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arton Rotaru wrote:

Well, what you see there are poorly made LOD models. Degrading a box shape like this, to a single triangle is just lazyness, or cheating the land impact system. With mesh the creator has the abillity to create all Level Of Detail models like he/she wish.

Example of a mesh model with hand made Level of Detail models:

 

This Jerry Can has a download weight of 0.4. So there isn't really any reason to not provide decent LOD models.

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So how many triangles are those cans?

 

[arton Rotaru]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

So how many triangles are those cans?

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 Hi = 1032 Tris

 

Med = 720 Tris

Low = 80 Tris

Lowest = 12 Tris

Anyway, here is a picture of a default prim cube. Check it's Display Weight. Obviously you can't create such a detailed jerry can with just one cube. Even more so if you want it to be just one prim/land impact. So you likely will try to do it with a sculpty. Btw, the default sculpt map has 2048 triangles in Hi LOD and still 72 tris in it's lowest. (Next Image). And the last image shows the Display Weight of the mesh jerry can.